dreaming of mercy street (wear your inside out)
by acrosticacrumpet
Summary: Instructions for being Tony Stark. Set before (and briefly during) the first Iron Man film. "You will invent a new way of being. The world has no secrets from you, clever boy, except for all the things you don't understand." (Character study, boy genius versus complex emotional problems, all that good stuff.)


**A/N:** Apparently I've gone back to 2013 and I'm writing ill-advised self-indulgent character studies again, who knew? Welcome to "sir that's my emotional support capitalist": the fic. Title from Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street", which would have come out when Tony was 16, according to MCU chronology. **Warnings** for general and vague references to unhealthy coping mechanisms and relationships, and for Howard Stark being a bad parent in general.

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Sunny child full of love, full of hunger. Tell your parents everything, how you love them. Learn the songs the equations sing. Learn everything as fast as you can get it down. Stubborn, even then, untiring, ceaseless. Strip away the layers of the world to find its secrets. Love your mother. Love your father. Love your butler. Run around, the world isn't fast enough. Write as soon as your hands can hold a pen. Scribble the numbers down before they escape.

As you grow, feel, even then, that the world will get away if you let it.

Make your parents proud. Do everything anyone can do twice as hard as anyone else does it. Be sunny and expressive sometimes, giving way more and more to bitten-lip stubbornness. Don't give up for anyone. Make your father proud. Make your father proud. Make your mother less tired. You will invent a new way of being. The world has no secrets from you, clever boy, except for all the things you don't understand.

Become quieter at home and louder everywhere else. Tell no jokes in front of your father. Find yourself the funniest person in the room as long as he's not in it. Learn everything. Learn everything. Learn everything. The world has no secrets from you. The world will have no secrets from you when you are done with it. Love your mother and the curl of her vowels. Love your butler. Learn everything. Watch with silent eyes. Love your father.

Understand that your father is a brilliant man.

Understand that you are very like your father.

Understand your father does not know what to do with someone like him who is not him.

Understand that your father is an angry man.

Learn everything. Rip up the equations and write new ones, like a new form of poetry no-one has discovered yet, a universe opening up for you in blinding light. Learn that silence and loudness are two sides of the same coin, or the same knife. Watch with silent eyes. Joke around even at home, get loud, even when your father is there. You like your jokes. You are learning that everything can be a joke, including you. As you grow, learn that there is a core of anger in you, a growing rebellion you did not know before. Understand that you are very like your father.

Understand that you can have anything in the world that you want, and that you still want something nameless and shapeless you do not have. You can buy anything in the world except for a way to make that empty feeling go away. Learn that having everything and wanting something is called greed.

Love your mother and the curl of her vowels and the silent darkness of her eyes.

Go to college. Now, learn from other MIT boys and find new ways of learning the world. You are the youngest in the room, hungry boy with skill in your hands. But you are used to being a small dog in a room full of big dogs. You are the one who will rip the equations apart and find the universe where they break. You are the one who can do anything, have anything, build anything. Laugh. Make friends, influence people. Watch with silent eyes.

Learn that success is everything, and success is measured in the ability to do anything you want. Learn that anything you want is measured by how many rules you break. Learn that life is a game and the man who can break all the rules, the laws of college and city and physics, is the winner. Learn that life is a party and a party is the answer to all things. Get out of control, make a game of it. Learn that life is a party and no-one at the party is your friend. Make friends with everyone, buy everyone a drink, especially yourself. Learn to trust no-one.

Learn how much you want tenderness. Learn how dangerous that is. Love your mother, and the tired marks under her eyes, when you go home. Love your butler, who taught you how kind silence could be. Love your father, against your better judgement.

The media is coming for you, has always been coming for you. Newshounds baying for blood. Learn to trade them scandal for scandal. Learn that whatever they accuse you of, you can always do something worse. Learn that the only thing to defeat a story is a bigger story. Teach them that you can outmatch every story, that you cannot shame a man who feels no shame. Silence and loudness are two sides of the same knife. You learned that a long time ago.

When your parents die, feel it like an open wound. Feel it like an amputation. Feel it like the death of some young thing that never reached full growth. The world has no secrets from you, except for all the things you can't understand.

You loved your mother and the tired marks under her eyes. You loved your father, against your better judgement.

The company is yours now. Prove that the rulebreaker can make the rules. Begin by clawing your way up, working late nights; end by soaring. Teach these businessmen to dance. Build new things, poems, symphonies, cities in miniature, all made of guns. Hungry boy with skill in your hands. Bring that to everything your father knew or did or made. Teach war how to fly. Be the ruleless man, the ruthless man. Play to win. Dance like the world is yours, clever boy. The world is yours, except for all the things you can't understand.

Dare the media to find a rule you haven't broken. Make headlines like records to break. Something to talk about? Give them everything to talk about. Give them everything. You're the man who has everything. You are the one who can do anything, have anything, build anything, just like your father. Understand that you are very like your father. They do not know what to do with someone like him who is not him? Teach them. Show them brilliance. Show them everything. Show them everything but anger.

Love a select few, their tiredness and their kind silence, against your better judgement. Know that having everything and wanting something is called greed.

_There is shrapnel in your heart. The man who has everything has seven days._

_They stripped away your layers to find your secrets. They're about to regret that, because now you know your secrets, too._

_Like, your whole rulebreaking life, you've followed unspoken rules to the letter. Like, your whole life, you have known these rules were meaningless. Dance, clever boy! The world is yours, and you own nothing._

_You own nothing but the thing you have called greed, and that thing now burns in your chest, all secrets stripped away. There is nothing but this._

_Hungry boy with skill in his hands. Get to work. They wanted the dreamer of armies? Dream of things that will make them wish for armies._

_You own nothing. There is nothing but this – life – freedom – fire – Yinsen – _

_Yinsen –_

_Get to work, man full of love, full of hunger. The thing you have called greed is weeping._

_Step out into the desert._

_Step out into the future._


End file.
